Pages

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Officer Barns – No Yellow Chalk

Here on the streets of Culpeper, we have 30min and 2hour parking in the downtown area.Since there are no meters a patrol officer walks up and down Davis Street marking the car tires in different color chalk every 30 minutes, that way they know when to write a parking ticket.

It was a lovely almost spring day and my daughter and I decided to eat at one of my favorite restaurants downtown.We got in the car and make the less than 2 mile journey to Davis Street.Once there I found an empty place to park by the entrance of the restaurant and parked.Before I could even get out of my car I spotted my favorite Police Officer……You guessed it, Officer Barns.He had the parking patrol today and was diligently marking everyone’s tires in yellow chalk.

No…not yellow, I was thinking as I bolted out of the car to stop him before he make a hideous yellow mark on my tire.“Good Moring Officer Barns, I see you have parking duty today.I’m going to have to ask you to use a different color chalk on my tires.Yellow does not match the color of the car and I don’t want to drive around the rest of the day with your yellow line marking its territory like a dog that just whizzed on my tires."

“How are you Mrs. Gomez?Will blue work for you?”He calmly replied, knowing he would waste his time and breath, trying to convince me to let him mark my tire in yellow.

“Yes.Blue is fine. Anything but yellow,” I responded as I walked away.He carefully wrote the time on my tire in blue chalk and went on his merry way.After lunch we went to the Frenchman’s Corner across from the restaurant for Belgian Chocolate and tea.When we were done and returned to the car, my daughter started to laugh as she looked at the passenger side of the car.I walked around the car to see what she was laughing at. The time had been written on each tire along with notes all in light blue chalk.

11:15 Nice to see you Mrs. G

11:45 thank you for the OFC donation

12:05 lunch must be good

12:30 say hi to Marc

13:03 please don’t make me write a ticket!

*note: Marc is the owner of the Frenchman’s Corner.

I just stood there shaking my head, knowing I would now have to get my car washed.But it is me we are talking about and I don’t know how to leave well enough alone.So, I stopped in at the local Walmart and bought a large bucket of side walk chalk.I carefully remove all the yellow ones and delivered it to the police station with a note:

Dear Chief Jenkins,

I just wanted to give you and your fine patrol officers a shout out.Job well done and make a little donation to the department, 64 colors are way better that 4.

About Me

As a teen C.G. Powell was selected as a member of her school's newspaper staff. After her first article the editor decided the darkroom was a more suitable place for her skills…or lack of. Since then, she has traveled everywhere—thanks to her innate curiosity about the world and the Navy. In her life time, she has learned: aviation electronics, CCNA networking, Gemology and how to get bloodstains out of the carpet (you never know when you might need that). But her latest, all-consuming, endeavor is storytelling. When asked why, her response was "I live to challenge myself; I like to be pushed outside of my comfort zone and writing is one of those things that pushes my boundaries. Besides it was the only way to share all of the crap bouncing around in my head!"
C.G. Powell lives in Virginia with her husband and children. When she is not writing, you might find her watching hot guys jog past her front window, ordering the cabana boy to fix her another drink or abusing the local authorities…but that’s just hearsay.